Taxes likely would be higher with pooling

When Finance Minister (and Vaughan - King - Aurora MPP) Greg Sorbara announced in his budget last month that pooling among the municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) was going to be phased out, a lot of politicians in York Region (and other regions too, for that matter) cheered.

Although pooling was established with good intentions, namely to prevent City of Toronto taxpayers from footing an excessive share of the bill for social programs, it was still a sore point with politicians outside the megacity, who were obliged to collect taxes from their constituents and then send that money to 100 Queen St. West in Toronto. Once there, regional officials, in York and elsewhere, had no control over what was done with that money.

That is not something that any elected official wants try and explain to their taxpaying public. It also stands to reason that when some of these politicians were cornered with questions from constituents about taxes, a lot of them would have pointed a finger of blame at the infamous GTA pooling.

So it's easy to understand why they would have cheered Sorbara's announcement.

But we fear they may have set their expectations a little higher than they should have.

It became clear during Thursday's debate of the Regional budget that several councillors had envisioned that the phasing out of pooling was going to result in adjusted tax rates. There was never much of an indication what tax levels some of these councillors had in mind, but a couple of them made it clear that the 4.8 per cent increase was not what they were expecting. We suspect some of them might have been spreading the word among their constituents to expect something a lot less.

Now there are some realities at work here.

None of us particularly enjoy paying taxes, and we suspect not a single person reading these words will argue with that last point. Most of us pay our taxes grudgingly because we know we have to, and because the money is necessary if we're going to have the services that we have come to expect from government.

And as Mayor Margaret Black indicated, York does have a lot of very demanding taxpayers.

Another reality is those demands are going to increase. People bringing up the end of the post-war baby boom are looking at the "Big Five-Oh," while their older fellows are looking at retirement, if they're not already there.

That means that a demanding taxpaying public is likely going to get more demanding in the years to come.

And then there's the growth that's coming to York. King is going to experience a very limited amount of that growth, but other parts of the Region are going to feel a lot more of it. Whether we like it or not, it's coming and it's going to increase the demand that Black alluded to.

That means there's a lot of work to do, and money to be spent, with the prospect of debt being incurred.

Now debt is not necessarily a bad thing. If you have a mortgage, look around your house and realize that it was the ability to enter into controlled debt that enable you buy it. But also realize the less debt you carry, the better.

Thus Regional councillors opted to focus the savings realized this year from GTA pooling toward keeping York's debt down.

Although it might be hard to grasp now, by reducing future debt, Regional councillors are avoiding future debt costs, which would have to be paid through some method, probably taxation.

An immediate tax break? It sure sounds great. Show us one politician would wouldn't enjoy selling that to constituents. Investing funds toward reducing taxes a couple of years in the future? That's a harder sell. But the product benefits the electorate in the long-run.

And isn't that where municipal politicians should be aiming their efforts?